Thanks for the responses guys, I'll definitely look into purchasing those books!

I probably should have been more specific but its not peer to peer sharing in the digital sense, but rather websites such as Parkatmyhouse, Erento and Zilok that offer platforms to rent & hire physical assets. The idea is to unlock latent value in products that just sit around not being used, benefiting both the owner as they can earn some extra income and the renter as they do not have to purchase the product directly. Its emphasizes access over ownership.

There are relevant articles from political sciences about the overuse of resources and how societies can self organise to govern over consumption, but these are only loosely related in a general sense and I want to keep it as focused as possible. I've tried to look into journals relating to e-commerce but again these are a loose fit as this business model is relatively new.

I suppose what I'm really trying to ask is do you think it would be best for me to continue down this path and end up with work that's light on academic theory and references or just choose a completely new topic that has a substantial amount of theory that I could build upon.

Any opinions welcome as I'm finding this decision pretty tough!

I'm currently struggling to start my dissertation for a management and entrepreneurship course. I have chosen the topic of 'collaborative consumption' which refers to online peer to peer sharing websites. There is a lack of academic literature and theory on the subject and this is making it almost impossible to write a literature review, structure the work and find content to analyse and apply. There is some popular literature on the subject but this is fairly limited and un-academic.

I want to carry out a case study of a company that uses a businesses a model based on collaborative consumption and I have some decent research questions but without proper academic theory to draw from I'm not sure how to approach the analysis.

Does anyone have any advise of how to go about tackling this issue? There was so much theory on my undergraduate topic it was easy to base the whole project on that. Without this I feel kind of lost? Thanks any advise would be appreciated.